DAVID McKAY COMPANY, Inc. NEW YORK Copyright © 1959, 1960 by Alan E. Nourse All rights reserved LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NO. 60-7199 Manufactured in the United States of America VAN REES PRESS · NEW YORK Typography by Charles M. Todd Sixth Printing, April 1973 Part of this book was published in Amazing Science Fiction Stories...

The shuttle plane from the port of Philadelphia to Hospital Seattle had already gone when Dal Timgar arrived at the loading platform, even though he had taken great pains to be at least thirty minutes early for the boarding. "You'll just have to wait for the next one," the clerk at the dispatcher's desk told him unsympathetically. "There's nothing else you can do." "But I can't wait," Dal said. "I have to be in Hospital Seattle by morning." He pulled out the flight schedule and held it under the

It was a long way from the students' barracks to the pathology sector where Black Doctor Arnquist lived. Dal Timgar decided not to try to go to the barracks first. It was after midnight, and even though the message had said "regardless of hour," Dal shrank from the thought of awakening a physician of the Black Service at two o'clock in the morning. He was already later arriving at Hospital Seattle than he had expected to be, and quite possibly Black Doctor Arnquist would be retiring. It seemed b

The interview was held in the main council chambers of Hospital Seattle, and Dal could feel the tension the moment he stepped into the room. He looked at the long semicircular table, and studied the impassive faces of the four-star Physicians across the table from him. Each of the major medical services was represented this morning. In the center, presiding over the council, was a physician of the White Service, a Four-star Radiologist whose insignia gleamed on his shoulders. There were two phys

The ship stood tall and straight on her launching pad, with the afternoon sunlight glinting on her hull. Half a dozen crews of check-out men were swarming about her, inspecting her engine and fuel supplies, riding up the gantry crane to her entrance lock, and guiding the great cargo nets from the loading crane into her afterhold. High up on her hull Dal Timgar could see a golden caduceus emblazoned, the symbol of the General Practice Patrol, and beneath it the ship's official name: Dal shifted h

The three doctors huddled around the teletype, watching as the decoded message was punched out on the tape. "It started coming in just now," Tiger said. "And they've been beaming the signal in a spherical pattern, apparently trying to pick up the nearest ship they could get. There's certainly some sort of trouble going on." The message was brief, repeated over and over: REQUIRE MEDICAL AID URGENT REPLY AT ONCE. This was followed by the code letters that designated the planet, its location, and t

"I think," Black Doctor Hugo Tanner said ominously, "that an explanation is in order. I would now like to hear it. And believe me, gentlemen, it had better be a very sensible explanation, too." The pathologist was sitting in the control room of the Lancet , his glasses slightly askew on his florid face. He had climbed through the entrance lock ten minutes before, shaking snow off his cloak and wheezing like a boiler about to explode; now he faced the patrol ship's crew like a small but ominous b

Once more the crew of the Lancet settled down to routine, and the incident on Morua VIII seemed almost forgotten. But a change had come about in the relations between the three doctors, and in every way the change was for the better. If Jack Alvarez was not exactly cordial to Dal Timgar, at least he had dropped the open antagonism that he had shown before. Apparently Tiger's angry outburst had startled Jack, as though he had never really considered that the big Earthman might honestly be attache

In the control room the interstellar radio and teletype-translator were silent. The red light on the call board was still blinking; Tiger turned it off with a snap. "Here's the message that just came in, as near as I can make out," he said, "and if you can make sense of it, you're way ahead of me." The message was a single word, teletyped in the center of a blue dispatch sheet: GREETINGS "This is all?" Jack said. "That's every bit of it. They repeated it half a dozen times, just like that." " Wh

Slowly and patiently they drew the story from the emissary from the seventh planet of 31 Brucker. The small, monkey-like creature was painfully shy; he required constant reassurance that the doctors did not mind being called, that they wanted to help, and that a contract was not necessary in an emergency. Even at that the spokesman was reluctant to give details about the plague and about his stricken people. Every bit of information had to be extracted with patient questioning. By tacit consent

It was a virus, beyond doubt. The electron microscope told them that, now that they had the substance isolated and could examine it. In the culture tubes in the Lancet 's incubators, it would begin to grow nicely, and then falter and die, but when guinea pigs were inoculated in the ship's laboratory, the substance proved its virulence. The animals injected with tiny bits of the substance grew sick within hours and very quickly died. The call to the Hospital Ship was canceled as the three doctors

For a moment the others just stared at their Garvian crewmate. Then Jack Alvarez snorted. "You'd better go back and get some rest," he said. "This has been a tougher grind than I thought. You're beginning to show the strain." "No, I mean it," Dal said earnestly. "I think that is exactly what's been happening." Tiger looked at him with concern. "Dal, this is no time for double talk and nonsense." "It's not nonsense," Dal said. "It's the answer, if you'll only stop and think." "An intelligent viru

It was hours later when their ship reached the contact point co-ordinates. There had been little talk during the transit; each of them knew already what the other was thinking, and there wasn't much to be said. The message had said it for them. Dal's worst fears were realized when the inspection ship appeared, converting from Koenig drive within a few miles of the Lancet . He had seen the ship before—a sleek, handsomely outfitted patrol class ship with the insignia of the Black Service of Pathol

Red Doctor Dal Timgar knew at once that there would be no problem in diagnosis here. The Black Doctor slumped back in his seat, gasping for air, his face twisted in pain as he labored just to keep on breathing. Tiger and Jack burst into the room, and Dal could tell that they knew instantly what had happened. "Coronary," Jack said grimly. Dal nodded. "The question is, just how bad." "Get the cardiograph in here. We'll soon see." But the electrocardiograph was not needed to diagnose the nature of

It was amazing to Dal Timgar just how good it seemed to be back on Hospital Earth again. In the time he had been away as a crewman of the Lancet , the seasons had changed, and the port of Philadelphia lay under the steaming summer sun. As Dal stepped off the shuttle ship to join the hurrying crowds in the great space-port, it seemed almost as though he were coming home. He thought for a moment of the night not so long before when he had waited here for the shuttle to Hospital Seattle, to attend

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